22 / 64
20
NO FOOLING AROUND TONIGHT!
Spring has definitely sprung, the smell of freshly-cut grass more pungent
by the day, the importance of every Ulster game until the end of the
season more acute.
ROD NAWN
It’s the first day of April, a day for japes and jovial
conceits, but for the home side nobody wants to
be an April Fool, there will be only a deadly serious
approach to the sternest challenge possible,
surprise but deserving table-topping Connacht.
And it’s a game in front of a Kingspan Stadium
crowd which needs to shed its doubts and
concerns about recent form and urge its favourites
to what is now a critically-important victory.
The Six Nations is now consigned to the memory
bank, some familiar faces are restored to the
squad, and there’s added electricity in the return to
fitness after long-term injuries of key players.
Iain Henderson’s appearance against Glasgow last
week was one of the year’s most heart-warming
sights, a hugely gifted forward who’d have been
missed in any company demonstrating that he’s
back to his intimidating, foraging, barrelling best.
Tommy Bowe is on the cusp of putting up his
hand to help secure something tangible from the
Guinness PRO12 campaign, his absence since
the World Cup keenly felt by fans and by the
team-mates who appreciate the skillset – and the
stardust – he scatters on all in a white jersey.
Gradually – and without any complaint – Les Kiss
and Head Coach Neil Doak have navigated Ulster
through a roller-coaster of a season which started
with the inevitable disruption of an autumn World
Cup, the subsequent injury toll which kept Bowe,
Jared Payne and then Henderson on the sidelines.
Added to that were fitness problems for Darren
Cave, Peter Nelson, Luke Marshall, for the stoic
Stuart Olding, the luckless Dan Tuohy, for Wiehahn
Herbst, Alan O’Connor and there was a plethora of
other setbacks for experienced players.
Very much on the ‘plus’ side were the emergence
into the spotlight of prop Kyle McCall, winger Rory
Scholes, and the spectacular rise of yet another
Ulster midfield ‘gallactico’, Stuart McCloskey, yet
another to graduate swiftly to the Irish side.
Ulster’s season has been one which has, at times,
raised the spirits – witness the crushing defeats in
Europe of Toulouse – and also managed to stall
rising hopes just when faltering form seemed to
have come out of ‘rehab’ successfully.
Last weekend’s defeat in Glasgow was particularly
galling in so many ways: the side played some
smart, clever rugby, scored two cracking tries, then
somehow contrived to concede 18 points without
reply as the Warriors delighted in, first, an unlikely
win, and in denying Ulster even a losing bonus
point with Stuart Hogg’s last-gasp, long-distance
penalty.
Ulster could justifiably do a little pondering about
the forward pass which set Hogg in for a try which
sparked the Scots but, more worryingly, referee
John Lacey decided that, at the breakdown, the
men in white persistently offended.
Les Kiss says, quite rightly “It’s done, we move
on,” but he clearly wasn’t happy about some of the
interpretations and wryly hoped that – like Glasgow
last Friday – his team might concede just four
penalties against tonight’s impressive visitors, Pat
Lam’s Connacht, the PRO12 leaders.
That Sunday lunchtime defeat in February by
the Scarlets at Kingpsan left many scratching
heads, not about the talent clearly available, but
at a frustrating inability to perform with genuine
consistency, that capacity Ulster has always shown
to ‘edge’ a result when not exactly firing on all
cylinders.
Tonight, on the second week of the ‘race to the line’
and the Top Four semi-finals in the PRO12, the test
of how steeled the side is for a run-in which could
really give Ulster Rugby supporters some reward
for holding fast – despite the odd mid-season
‘wobble’ – to the belief that this panel of players will
make the next few years very special for players,
coaches and those who pack the tournament’s
finest stadium to the rafters week-after-week.
It would be stupidly one-eyed not to have been
concerned that three of the last four PRO12 outings
have been defeats, that Ulster has slumped from
top-of-the-table five weeks ago to fifth, outside the
play-off placings and with Glasgow on the same
points total, and with a game in hand.
Kiss is right when he says that so tight is the battle
at the top that sides are going to take points off
each other, and he cites the clashes of Welsh clubs
as important, but not as important as his own
squad staying focussed on the season’s primary